Deprivation And Abundance: An Observational Analysis In A Time of Uncertainty.

Another evening passed without sleep, my daily dose of melatonin seemed to be playing me like that child egged on into opening the carton of malted Robin Eggs instead of holding out for two cartons as a reward a few hours later. The growing pains of a shrunken body inflating with regularity, something I can’t say I experience with regard to digestion, keeps me awake at all hours. My stretched skin itches. My belly is full, and takes on the shapeliness of a dome-like yurt – so hipster of me – to house my internal organs and vacant uterus.

After dozing off for about an hour, I wake up with the discomfort of having to vacate my insides, which doesn’t seem to happen. Like I said, regularity is an anomaly. With a high-fiber diet, in all likelihood, I am not hydrated enough to liquefy the impending bulk. Regardless, I climb out of bed, my thighs no longer twigs and my heels no longer seesawing in an attempt to hold up my once deadly weight, or lack thereof.

I forcefully hit my cowhide rug-covered floors, and no longer attempt to silence myself. If I am heard and if those around me are roused from their slumber, then so be it. This isn’t selfish. This is logic: A classic “if…then,” argument. I do not intend to awaken my parents, but I admit that my reply to the age-old icebreaker inquiry, “if you could have one superpower, what would it be?” never included being invisible.

After brushing my teeth, washing my face, moisturizing, spraying body mist, and applying lip balm, I make my way down the winding stairs with a swagger that is partially as a direct result of waddling from constipation and partially my way of telling the world still cloaked in darkness that I have arrived. It’s as if I am behind my retro-latte mente-colored dashboard, a pistachio color, sitting in the driver’s seat, heat on full blast with my windows down on a winter day, blasting Bhangra melodies into Long Island suburbia.  

I consume my regularly scheduled breakfast that combines meal with half of my snack before heading to the gym. At home, on my own and with the auspices of my outpatient team, I would, once upon a time, space out my meals and snacks in a planned approach that I modeled after the dietetic plan prescribed by inpatient treatment providers. Soon, however, I felt consumed by thoughts of when I could have my snack not longer after having my meal, so I just had them together. I did not want to deprive myself. I did not want to deny myself. I did not want to feel like I was that participant in the study who held out for just long enough to reap the rewards of patience. And therein lies the crux of confusion. Patience does not equate to painful, just as beauty is not dependent on having pain. If that were the case, aspirin would be stocked next to blush.

Let’s go back to that scenario of the child, or let’s just say me, sitting in front of a table and offered a carton of malted chocolate balls, speckled in pastel colors as faux-robin eggs for the occasion of Easter. I am told that if I hold out and not touch the carton I am given, I will be given two later on. Some may see this as a bargain. I’m talking about those large warehouses – BJ’s, Costco, Sam’s Club – and those little yellow-tags underneath the product you came for stating that you could get 2 for the price of one, or those devilish red and white tags at Target, not so coincidentally the same color scheme as a STOP sign, that says you could receive a $5 Gift card should you buy 4 body products. Before you know it, you’re walking out of the shop with shampoo, conditioner, blackhead strips, and a bath bomb instead of just the face wash you needed. For me, I would rather pay the extra dollar than purchase more than I need. One purchase already is difficult for me to digest – no pun intended.

Deprivation is a concept I am acutely familiar with. Pain is a construct that I deemed necessary for success. I would make myself jump through hoops: walk over the cracks in the sidewalk, step on only the dried crunchy leaves down the block where my crush lived because if I happened to step on the deadened soft leaves, like wilted pieces of lettuce, the ones that would nary make a crackle under your foot or crunch in between molars, was what I classified as an omen for unrequited love. Hell, I would make myself sashay weighted hula hoops that I doubled up and swung around my waist for hours on end to ensure that I could become a human hourglass and make my body’s internal fluid the equivalent to the immortality nectar found in Tuck Everlasting – the cinched midsection of the timer where morsels of sand could only pass through single-file and with great difficulty at that.

I never cared for abundance. Having too much of anything made me house a deep-seeded dislike for places that sold gigantic-sized tubs of peanut butter better suited for commercial use. What is interesting, is how bifurcated a concept abundance is in our society.  

Abundance denotes greed, or gluttony. The idea of superfluous is that there is overflow- extra. Extra more likely than not, means wastage. When we hear the olden chime, “Extra! Extra!” prefacing the command, “read all about it,” more times than not, one expects to hear about sinful discourse. The idea of possessing more is that one is not satisfied with less. Gluttony is considered dirty, piggish, and the fact that Honey-Boo Boo had a pet pig only underlined that idea.

If you get more sleep, or you have more time left in a competitive atmosphere that you could have filled up with more, well then, you are considered lazy. More goes hand-in-hand with being a sloth, which is another sin. We prize tiring one’s self out. All-nighters were hallmarks of success during college. Some, granted, are dismantling this idea, and these trailblazers include baby boomers who are part of the Today show’s Smuckers-sponsored birthday shout outs; Centennials who swear their long life span is due to having a solid eight hours of sleep, in addition to maintaining faith, enjoying an adult beverage, or more fittingly, an über adult beverage, and eating solid meals that sometimes includes a hefty dose of red meat. That’s correct, many times, these seniors drop knowledge that directly contradicts our bland-chicken breast-hailing ways.

And yet, our society prides itself on more. I was never that Girl Scout who aimed to sell the most boxes of cookies and earn a patch or whatever the prize that came along with it was. Instead, I looked forward to going out into the neighborhood in full uniform, so official, hitting the pavement and knocking on doors with a trifold brochure with glossy images of buttery Trefoils, classic Thin Mints, nostalgic Peanut Butter Do-Si-Dos and Tagalongs, and the newcomer back then, the Samoa.

The Samoa was that exotic caramel, coconut-shave-covered, chocolate drizzled circle that I was incredibly annoyed by. The Samoa sounded far too similar to the Indian triangular fried dough encasing spiced boiled potatoes, with a variation of peas, nuts, and sometimes meat. Also, the Samoa was too much in and of itself. It was abundant. It was fussy. It was indulgent and not straightforward. My tongue was hit with cloying sweetness that my child self likened to immediately, but that also got stuck in the crevices of my teeth.

With the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19, I am suddenly tackling both feelings of deprivation and abundance. I feel abundantly privileged to be financially supported, to have a comfortable shelter, to have access, and to be dependent overall. It is difficult for me to wrap my head around dependence as being a privilege, but it always was one for me, in retrospect. During my formative years, I was fiercely independent, albeit sheltered. I played outside, took public transportation everywhere, spearheaded my own academic and extracurricular careers, developed my own likes and dislikes, and even had the audacity to laminate doorknob hangers I had printed out from a kiddie website that had graphics and saying like, “Loud Music: Do not disturb,” and “Please knock.” I jammed out to beats while studying, writing on the early web platform, Tumblr, and daydreaming finding a prince akin to the Hindi film actors while lovingly creating a montage of Harvard paraphernalia on my closet door.

I am practicing abundance, or rather, implementing as opposed to practicing because purchasing grocery in bulk is unprecedented for me. When I was still able to go to the gym, I began honoring my increasingly higher energy needs, we’re talking athlete proportions, and I felt that I did not have enough to sustain me. My go-to are cashews. Raw cashews, not roasted, nor salted. Having taken some reprieve in scrolling through Instagram, I landed on Nanak Foods’ feed, expecting to see images of my father’s enormous tub of ghee. Instead, I saw an array of traditional North Indian confections, almost all of which were garnished with cashews. When I was attempting to allay my fears of having gone through bags of cashews like water, I ran a web search on the tree nut in order to learn of its benefits. All of the top hits were directly related to the Indian subcontinent, my paternal heritage.

With the idea of stocking up on grocery and domestic products in order to reduce contact with others during a time of viral pandemic contagions spread in unknowingly widespread proportions, people had cleaned out grocery store shelves of all nuts. My beloved go-to that compensated for my energy needs was no longer in stock. I managed to track down a single 16 oz. bag that I, believe it or not, have finished in two days in addition to my three meals and snacks. I purchased it only to find out that the gym had closed until further notice. My activity level dropped considerably, and with it, my appetite. Now this felt like extra. My stocking up on protein bars felt like extra. I found two remaining jumbo bags of raw cashews, and I purchased both, not knowing if and when I may need it. Prior to that, I had picked up a good deal more of my protein bars, a dozen eggs, bread, frozen riced cauliflower, frozen seafood, and two jars of nut butter, one of which I purchased as a substitute for the cashews that I consume as is and not at all modified into a thickener, milk, or cream-replacement; these uses, are what I suspect those other consumers had purchased them for.

This filled pantry is what others may consider completely normal, reducing the frequency of trips to the market, and thereby lending time to other facets of life. I have to remind myself that in order to participate in other facets, I must first have life: to truly practice social distancing by not going to the market multiple times, and to feed my body, yes, but also to continue to nutritionally rehabilitate my body while recovering from anorexia. I do not want to have to feel deprived in the event that I do not have foods I regularly have at my disposal.

Still, I plan on returning the bits and bobs I feel I will not use before their expiration. And to this end, it is abundantly clear that we are collectively deprived of a peace of mind. As a result, the public is doing away with the television series that dives into the niche population of hoarders. We’re creating a dearth, one that is temporary due to regular turnover by suppliers.

 Reality television has truly become the mundane: standing on lines, sitting in traffic, income unsteady or nonexistent. Demand is trumping supply, but for reasons that are arguably not grounded in truth. It’s not like we’re cashing in on stock or investing in anything but mental health – or maybe just a bandage to allay underlying issues we cannot truly deal with. According to The New Yorker economist cited regarding toilet paper supply in the age of the corona virus pandemic, these lightweight products, soft to touch, actually take up a large amount of space, nullifying the incessant need to stock up on a load that will have no place in the household, and due to the regularity of supplier output, will not have any value once this pandemic economy subsides. This is not stock. This is what it means to be going through the motions – pun somewhat intended.

So deprivation and abundance: these are two entities balanced across a fulcrum. These are two entities that sashay gently to the ebbs of gas particles. This is the invisible hand making up for my lack of desire to become invisible. Perhaps I would like to fly, but that would make me just as susceptible to being controlled by the air. I don’t know about you, but I would rather stay grounded. I would rather feel the force of the earth pushing beneath me. I would rather have weight, the force of gravity. Let’s take up space.